


On and Off the Clock

by htbthomas



Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Humor, Light Case Fic, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-11 01:35:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7020124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/htbthomas/pseuds/htbthomas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jo's trying to keep a secret - and not just Henry's this time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On and Off the Clock

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, idelthoughts, for the beta! ♥
> 
> Temporary Ch. 2 added to trigger notifications.

Jo Martinez had seen a lot of dead bodies in her career. Some were open and shut cases, things she could solve before the latte in her hand went cold. Others took days to solve, or weeks. A few went cold completely, their evidence filed and speculation written down, then left in a box somewhere.

But there were very few of those now that Henry Morgan was on her team. His keen eye for detail and long life experience, combined with her instincts and years on the force, made it tough for many murderers to escape justice. Today, Henry crouched over the body at the crime scene, a puzzled frown on his lips. She forced her attention from the fullness of his lips and focused on the frown. Might this be the first case to go cold on his watch?

The victim, Rafael Antansio, lay on his stomach on the Indian rug, one arm bent and the other outstretched as if he were reaching for something as he died. But they'd searched the room. The desk, the cabinets, checked for loose floorboards—nothing stood out. No pills, no weapons, no hidden camera, no incriminating evidence. Perhaps he had simply breathed his last in that position by chance.

Her gut told her differently. 

"Hmm," Henry said, standing slowly. "It is difficult to say without opening him up on my table." He brushed by her as he made another circuit of the body, then came to stand beside her. Close, but not too close. "But my preliminary analysis is heart failure."

"Even dying in that position? He looks like he's reaching for something."

"I agree. Perhaps the crime scene unit will turn something up."

Jo wasn't willing to give up yet. She eyeballed the line between Antansio's fingers and the desk, and then ran her fingers along the wood below and along the sides. Her fingers stopped at an odd indentation. "I think there might be a—"

Before she could finish her thought, a hidden drawer popped out. Inside, there was a small notebook, filled with pages and pages of writing in some sort of code. Henry peered over her shoulder at it, breath hot on her neck. "Do you recognize it?" she asked him, taking a careful, unwilling step back.

She placed it in his hands and he flipped through. "Sadly, no." Lowering his voice, he said, "Codebreaking was not my specialty in the war. In any of them."

They'd have to take it to someone else, then. But both she and Henry knew without saying it. Deciphering the little book was probably the key to solving the case.

* * *

Back in the car, Henry's hand rested on hers as it gripped the gear shift. She closed her eyes, letting herself enjoy the feel of it for a moment, and then she put the car into drive and slid her hand off into her lap as the car started forward into traffic.

In the passenger seat, Henry sighed. "Does it make you that uncomfortable?"

"No…" she said. It wasn't that exactly that, just—"I think it's more that I'm not ready to share this with the world yet. I'm still trying to figure out how we _do_ this."

"It seemed fairly straightforward last night," he purred, and his tone of voice sent a shiver through her as she remembered.

"Yes, it did." Then she shook herself mentally. "Off the clock, we work just fine." More than fine. Now that she'd come to terms with everything that Henry was, she found him more irresistible than ever. "But on the clock, does this—" She pointed back and forth between the two of them, a fluttery gesture. "—help or hurt the case?"

She hadn't dated within the department for years, and only once as a rookie cop. That had been such a disaster that she'd made sure to keep business and pleasure as separate as possible. Sean working for the DA's office had been close enough. But Henry… he had become her partner just as much as Hanson was. Even more now. What did they do if this fell apart? If this intense attraction faltered or turned sour? Could they continue to work together? Could he trust her to keep the secret? Would he run again—so far that he'd disappear from her life forever?

All of these questions had been haunting her since the rush of their first kiss, their first time, had subsided enough that she could think straight. If Henry was as worried as she, he rarely showed it. _"Believe me,"_ Abe had said, _"Henry has considered every scenario a hundred times over, or he would never have let you in."_

And she believed him. But believing something, and putting it into action were two different things.

"Just… give me a little more time. When I'm sure we can work together without our relationship distracting from the job, I'll tell everyone. I'll get a cake for the break room, even."

Henry chuckled. "Not a grocery store-bought cake, I hope."

She cuffed him lightly on the arm. "Snob." Then she turned away before the glittering mirth in his eyes made her want to pull over and kiss it away.

* * *

When she returned to the morgue later that morning, Henry was wearing his usual self-satisfied expression. "You must have been right," she said, with a returning smirk. "Heart failure."

"Failure, yes…" He peeled back the covering sheet to reveal Antansio, lying face down on the table. "But not of the heart." He placed two gloved fingers beside a small puncture wound on the victim's abdomen. "He was stabbed here with a long, thin blade, with one clean blow."

"Stabbed? Then where was the blood? Was he killed elsewhere, cleaned up and posed like that?"

"Possibly," Henry said. "The wound you're seeing now has been cleaned. When we first examined him, it was neatly closed."

Jo leaned down over the body to look more closely. "Closed?"

"Yes." Henry leaned down beside her, his breath close to her ear. "It was quite clever, actually. I've heard of the technique in battle situations, but I hadn't come across it myself yet."

Jo huffed and turned her face toward his. "Are you going to keep talking circles, or am I going to have to beat a straight answer out of you?"

A slow smile started on his face. "It's a little early for foreplay, isn't it, Detective?"

Jo could swear that he was trying to distract her on purpose. And it was working—she'd like nothing better than to confer privately with him in his office. "Watch it, Doctor, or I might have to press you up against that wall there so hard that you'll think it's—"

"Superglue! I couldn't believe it myself until I tested it." 

Jo nearly jumped out of her skin at Lucas's voice, her knee banging the leg of the examination table as she straightened in haste. Henry was as cool as could be, rising unconcernedly to nod at his assistant. "Our murderer had a deft hand. There was just enough of the substance to keep the wound closed so that Mr. Antansio bled to death internally. That, combined with the resulting gastrointestinal perforation, led to his demise."

Disgust filled her, wiping away all remaining traces of desire that Lucas's appearance hadn't eradicated. She made a face. "How cruel. Whatever could the guy have done to deserve something like that?"

"Hopefully the little notebook of secrets you found will shed some light." Henry jotted down a few notes on his autopsy report and then capped his pen. "I need to type this up and file it. It shouldn't take long. I can meet you at the precinct, or if you'd rather wait…?"

"I'll wait," she said. Hanson was busy running down a codebreaker in the department. There wasn't much progress to be made until the code was deciphered. Before they started dating, she might have left. But now, watching Henry go, she already felt impatient about when he would be done so they could get back to work. Together.

"So… congrats must be in order," Lucas said, suddenly smiling at her elbow.

Jo clutched lightly at her chest in surprise. "Wear a bell, would you?" She took a couple of deep breaths, and then what Lucas had said registered. "What do you mean, congrats?"

"Oh, you know, you and Henry. I'm a little miffed that he didn't tell me himself," he said, his smile not showing any annoyance at all. "I've achieved a hug, a few compliments and outright approval… I guess confidant is a little ways down the line."

"Me… and Henry," she said, still processing that he somehow knew. And that Henry didn't tell him. So how…?

"Yeah. It's pretty obvious." His eyes widened in excitement. "And it's about time!"

Jo whirled on him, walking him backward against the table. "Don't—!" she began, and then controlled her volume. "Don't tell Henry that you know. Please," she added at the confused terror in his eyes. She took a step back.

"Um, so, you're not telling anyone. It's a… secret?" He looked very happy to be the bearer of one of Henry's secrets, rather than always in the dark.

She knew how he felt, but now the shoe was on the other foot. And if Lucas knew, then soon the whole morgue would know, and then the department… "Yes. It's better if no one knows. Yet."

He mimed locking his lips with a key and throwing it away. But the tilt of his head told her that he was more than a little curious about why. 

"All right," Henry said, returning. "Shall we go? I'm curious to see what secrets Detective Hanson might have turned up."

"Me too, she said, and shot a warning look over her shoulder at Lucas.

She needn't have bothered. He was cleaning the surgical instruments, carefully not looking in their direction.

* * *

"So my guy, he thinks the book can be decoded with this cypher…" Hanson slid the cypher and a sheet with an example page translated for reference across the desk. "Looks like the book was filled with sordid tales."

Henry's eyebrows rose. "Tales of what?" He pulled the notebook and cypher over to peruse.

Hanson shrugged. "Mostly family entanglements, deals under the table, secret relationships, that stuff."

Jo's shoulders stiffened at the last part, but she quickly rolled them downward to cover it. Henry didn't react at all. He was busily decrypting a page at the end of the notebook, his flowing longhand script beginning to cover a sheet in her legal pad. She read over his shoulder, trying not to get too close and blow it in front of Hanson the way she had with Lucas.

Henry's pen stopped in the middle of a sentence. "Did 'your guy' have any guesses about this?" He pointed to a curling scribble, clearly different from the other letters around it.

Hanson rubbed his chin. "No. He didn't mention it. I can give him a call…"

Jo held up a hand. "Hold on." She had just noticed another similar scribble a few lines down. She picked up another pen and continued decoding, reaching across Henry and forgetting for a moment that she was trying to remain aloof. She finished the sentence and straightened. " _Observed 'scribble' excusing themselves during the morning meeting_ ," she read aloud. " _Thought nothing of it until 'other scribble' came in fifteen minutes later and headed for the back hallway. Checked security footage later. The pair are using a storage closet for clandestine trysts._ " She was rather proud that she had been able to read it without glancing once at Henry. They'd made use of a similar closet in the morgue recently. "The scribbles must stand for names. Where did he work again?"

"A junior partner at Wolpert and Treadwell," Henry supplied beside her. "Our mystery tome appears to be a blackmail book."

Hanson lifted the book to flip through its many pages again. "Might be years worth of dirt in here. Any one of these 'scribbles' could have killed him."

How would they narrow down the identities of the scribbles? "Maybe the security camera footage is a place to start. We can focus on the events that seem to take place at the law firm and work from there?"

"Yeah, it's amazing how many people totally forget how much is captured on film these days," Hanson said with a rueful shake of his head.

"Indeed," Henry said, and the tone of his voice made her turn. He had gone a bit pale. Coughing briefly, he covered his mouth with a hand and excused himself for cup from the watercooler.

Jo had been quite aware of the cameras during this secret few weeks. Almost obsessed with them, really, when she thought especially about all the times when Henry's immortality could have been discovered. It was amazing he'd never been outed that way yet. But what had him so rattled? She watched him down one cup, then another.

Hanson must have been doing the same. "So," he said. "You and the Doc finally going for it, huh?"

Jo turned to face him, maybe too quickly. "What?"

"At least a couple days, now, right? I'm happy for you." He smiled—was that a touch of smugness around the edges?—and took a drink from his coffee.

Jo sighed. "What gave it away?"

"A, I'm a detective, Jo, give me some credit. B, I've known you for years and I work with you every day." Hanson tilted his head side-to-side. "It's almost like you're trying not to look at him too much, not to touch him. It was almost weird."

So she'd overcorrected. Noted.

"But actually, C," he said with a grin, "I was passing by the antiques shop the other day and saw you kissing Henry goodbye. At seven in the morning." That grin was absolutely smug, no question.

But he agreed to keep it quiet. They were already making notes for reviewing the security footage at the law firm later by the time Henry returned.

* * *

"I can't crack him," Jo said, entering the viewing room behind the two-way glass. "I don't have any real proof, but I can just _feel_ that this is our guy."

Lieutenant Reece gave Jo a slight nod of assent. "He's definitely hiding something. Something more than the secrets with which Mr. Antansio was blackmailing him."

The two looked in on their suspect, one Lewis Gilman, for a long, silent moment. He fidgeted at the table, his eyes on his hands. He must have known, like every other crime-show-watching American, that he was being watched. 

"I think I'm going to let Hanson take a shot at questioning him. After he stews a while." What she didn't want to admit, even to herself, was that she felt sorry for the guy. Gilman's secret—attending narcotics anonymous meetings—really hadn't been anyone's business but his own. He'd feared dismissal; the partners frowned upon any sort of personal weakness, which had made the law firm a fertile breeding ground for the secrets filling Antansio's little book.

Reece gave her one of those little nods again, and they watched in silence for a few minutes more. Reece drew in a breath to speak… and let it back out.

"What?" Jo asked. 

Reece drew in another breath, and then shook her head, a small shake. 

"You can tell me," Jo said quietly.

After another moment, she finally spoke. "Detective—Jo—I've watched you grill men in that chair hundreds of times, attacking them from every angle, wheedling, cajoling, manipulating emotions like a pro. But today? Today you gave up too easily."

"Too easily? I was in there with him for a solid hour."

"And then you lost focus. Happens when you're distracted."

This was exactly what Jo was worried about. But was she distracted because of Henry—or simply because of the secret?

"If he's our murderer, Gilman made a critical mistake," Reece said after a while. When Jo didn't respond, she added, "He let Antansio hold all the power."

"How so?"

Without looking at her, Reece answered, "Secrets only hold power over you if you let them."

* * *

"Just put it down," Jo said, drawing out her words to gain some time. "That looks sharp." And the baker—Janis McCarthy, proprietor of Elegant Cakes—looked like she knew how to use it. Jo had no intention of testing that theory. 

Henry, beside her with hands raised, eyed the blade more critically. "Quite sharp. In fact, the murder weapon that killed Mr. Antansio was between ten and twelve inches and micro-serrated, as this one seems to be. I'd not considered a baker's knife as a possibility."

They were both considering it now, and closely. 

Jo began to shift to the side, small step by small step. If she could get in just the right position, she might be able to disarm her.

"He was going to bankrupt me!" McCarthy said, more fear than anger in her voice. "He was going to expose everything!" They hadn't even considered her a suspect before; they had only intended to ask her a few questions about her relationship with Gilman. She'd taken them to the back, out of the view of paying customers, and then threatened them.

"Blackmail is an appalling crime," Henry agreed. He would know better than anyone. "But murder is certainly worse."

McCarthy's hand began to shake, and Jo saw her chance. With a sudden leap, she kicked the knife out of McCarthy's hand. It went skittering into a corner. After a moment's shock, McCartney turned to dive after it. But Henry was ahead of her, tackling her around the waist and driving her into a table covered in flour. As a cloud of white rose among the three, Jo delivered a knockout punch to McCarthy's face. She toppled to the floor and was still. Jo cuffed her to a leg of the table.

It was all over in less than a minute.

As Jo shook her hand out, she looked at Henry, hair, face and clothing dusted with white powder. It was moments like this they'd miss if they stopped working together. She wasn't sure she could handle that. "Thanks for the assist."

The way he was looking at her, she might as well have told him she loved him. And maybe she had. "Anytime, Detective," he said with a cockeyed smile. She definitely couldn't handle that.

As he started to brush off, she dialed dispatch to come pick up McCarthy. By the time she was done, he'd gotten most of it—except a bit of flour on his nose. She took a few steps forward. "You missed a spot," she said, and then kissed it away.

"I liked that," he said quietly. "But aren't you afraid someone will see?"

Jo shook her head. "They all know; everyone knows. I don't know why I ever tried to hide it from a precinct full of investigators." And she'd had enough time to see that on the clock with Henry and off the clock wasn't so different. They worked well together either way.

He chuckled, gesturing to her still flour-covered body. "Well, then. I'd offer to do the same, but the job would be considerably more involved." 

They were still kissing when the first uni arrived on the scene. And the break room got its cake, just not from that bakery.


End file.
